Hate is cheap

Remember just a very few years ago Samsung was in a similar position vis a vis Nokia and Ericsson. And Apple was nowhere to be seen.

Good luck to them - if they can produce excellent devices and services, that will spur the whole industry onto better things. Let's face is, the Apple-Samsung duopoly is getting pretty stale pretty fast.

Really, people

I am stunned at how vacuous many of the comments on this and the preceding article on the subject are. So Rabbi Sacks (who is highly respected as someone thoughtful and articulate) makes comments which are critical of consumer culture, using the hot consumer items du jour as examples.

This is pretty standard fare from those (both religious and secular) who are concerned about whether people have the opportunity to be all they can be in life. It's also open to fair criticism from those who see consumer culture simply as a marker of the economic success of society. So, fair comment open to fair discussion.

If the Reg comments are anything to go by though, this is a religioug comment on Apple corporation, and solicits -- nay, demands -- your opinions on:

* Why iDevices suck,

* Why iDevices are cool,

* Why people who are visibly associated with religion can't be trusted (Um, do you actually even known anything, at all, about religion? Thought not.)

* Why people who are non-religious can't be trusted (Um, do you actually know anything at all about secular philosophy and ethics? Thought not either).

And sadly, vanishingly few comments have engaged with Rabbi Sacks' actual point - that we are being rendered shallow and vacuous by consumer culture.

Or, wait, maybe the comments have been more articulate on that subject than I'd initially thought.

Money

Thank you, El Reg

So I have been known to grumble at El Reg for the way in which some issues have been covered.

Well fair's fair -- this series of articles on the global security situation and the way sin which governments behave is really tremendously well researched, well written and illuminating. The world needs more of this kind of coverage!

@Londoners

Aircraft are a noisy, polluting nuisance. However, they are at present the only viable means of intercontinental travel and of domestic travel in bigger or lower-density countries.

Further, IME, most European regional flights operating from Heathrow are in smaller, less noisy planes like 737s and A320s.

So the question then, if noise is the problem, is really about volumes of intercontinental travel.

Now, onto London. In the post-Imperial age, London owes its continued economic power and prosperity to its role as a hub of various kinds. It's not like the UK has any major domestic manufacturing industry, or an automated inflow of stuff from the colonies, so London secures its place in the world by being a place of connection -- financially and culturally -- for world business and anglophone culture in general.

In a very real sense then, London's airports are what enables it to maintain its status in the world, and its levels of prosperity. The life of the city which you who live there choose(!) to call home stems from it being a place where people from all around the world choose to do business, congregate and visit for personal of professional reasons.

So you are called to make a compromise, and the question for you guys is, what is London's status as a global hub worth? It's not just about ongoing flights -- it's just as easy to connect through, say, Frankfurt or CDG. It's about how easy it is to keep your city a global hub of money and culture.

US-only

Does anyone know what it is with Yahoo and it's "US-only" everything? I was looking at their ad-placement service (YPN) the other day and that too was only available in the US. Other organisations seem to have no problem with the reality of international commerce, or the legal and financial issues involved -- even far smaller firms than Yahoo.

I'm not sure what proportion of internet users are inside versus outside the US, but I'm pretty confident that excluding all non-US customers isn't good business. Pretty characteristic of that particular firm though.